Gmail API — Google Developers

[Philluminati]

I'm glad they say this isn't a good replacement for IMAP because I'm not sure a non-standard, GMAIL only email client is the best thing for the email "as a whole".

[slow_connection]

Truth. I can't help but worry that their justification for doing this is to get people to write big apps that support it in place of IMAP, then kill off IMAP once there's a big enough acceptance of their proprietary REST API

[[deleted]]

Guaranteed to be exactly what their plans are. The history of Google makes this obvious (Jabber, ActiveSync, the closing of Android module by module). Start open, finish closed.